Episode 124: Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 7
In Episode 124, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 7,” Elizabeth and Flourish dig into a new pile of listener questions and comments. Topics covered include fan reactions when male versus female actors talk about shipping, whether spec scripts count as fanfiction, what to say to friends who disrespect fic, and how the podcast gets made.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:13:27] Elizabeth is a Hugo finalist! If you still aren’t subscribed to “The Rec Center,” what are you waiting for?
[00:19:35] Elizabeth’s written many articles that will help you explain why fanfiction doesn’t suck and should be valued on its own terms.
[00:21:00] The letter that instigated this voicemail was in Episode 119, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 6.”
[00:24:01] We also talked about actors being shippers in Episode 119, and also in Special Episode 13, “Star Wars: The Lowering of Expectations.” To listen to that one, you’ll have to pledge to our Patreon!
[00:25:38] Flourish makes it sound like Gillian Anderson is not bisexual. She is! ...but Flourish still doesn’t have a chance. [sad horns]
[00:28:51]
[00:31:52]
[00:32:23] We messed up!! This ask was not anonymous! It’s from sofiabanefics on Tumblr! And the episode sofiabanefics is referencing is Episode 123, “Reread, Rewatch, Replay.”
[00:33:43]
[00:37:19] Our interstitial music here and throughout is “Edge of the Woods” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:38:37]
[00:49:44] The episode where we discussed escapism and catharsis was also the one where we discussed the results of our mini-survey on fiction in times of crisis—#122, “Wash Your Hands and Read Some Fic.”
[00:54:37] Aja spoke with us in Episode 80, “Real Person Fiction.”
[00:56:00] Earlgreytea68 spoke with us in Episode 121, “The Money Question 2: The Appening.” The Discourse Trilogy consists of four (LOL) episodes: #84 “Purity Culture,” #85 “Age and Fandom,” #86 “The Money Question,” and #87 “What We Discourse About When We Discourse About the Discourse.”
[01:01:20]
[01:02:37] “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” by fiercynn and Scribe. Also:
[01:03:20] Podcasts! Be The Serpent; Overinvested.
[01:04:20] Episode 77 is “The Truth About Toxic Fandom.” Our most recent end-of-year episode is #116, “The Year In Fandom 2019.”
[01:08:40] Look at this cutie.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: OK! This is Episode #124, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 7.” There’s so many numbers in this title.
FK: [laughs] There’s only gonna become more numbers, right, cause we’re gonna eventually get into the double digits of the parts?
ELM: If people keep asking us questions, we’re gonna keep answering them, so yes. It’s just gonna get more numbery.
FK: All right, so, it’s actually, this is the shortest amount of time that we’ve ever taken between different letterbox episodes, but we have a lot.
ELM: Is that true? Hold on. Is that true?
FK: I think it is!
ELM: I think you just made that up. I, like, I think since we’ve started doing these AMAs it’s been anywhere from like, two months to five months in between each of them, and it’s been a couple of months. I think we did the last one in January, if not early February. And it’s now…
FK: It was February.
ELM: April 11th! It’s April 11th.
FK: It feels like it has been a million years, so.
ELM: It has been a million years.
FK: Everything has happened.
ELM: What were you doing when, wait. When was the last one? February what now?
FK: I think it was February 8th?
ELM: Just think about life then, when, in fact, the coronavirus was already in New York City, spreading and mutating—
FK: I know.
ELM: —as we’ve recently learned. Just thrilling to hear that it was there the whole time.
FK: The whole time, the whole damn time.
ELM: That we possibly spread it.
FK: Yeah, could’ve. That’s thrilling. Well, anyway! Uh, most of our questions—in fact I don’t think any of our questions are about this, and that’s refreshing. That’s great. I’m excited to talk about fandom things for a little bit and not the grinding apocalyptic despair.
ELM: [laughs] Well, you didn’t have phrase it that way.
FK: Look, I mean, it’s Holy Saturday so I am contractually—when we’re recording this—so I am contractually obligated to be gloomy.
ELM: That’s true. I gotta say, I watched Palm Sunday services for my church on their livestream last Sunday and I remembered a little too late how the Passion and then—does yours end with the same hymn? No?
FK: I don’t know what the hymn is, so…
ELM: The one that goes like, “Were you there when they crucified my…”
FK: Yes. That is, we do that one on Good Friday.
ELM: Oh, OK.
FK: And every time it makes me cry.
ELM: It’s so gloomy! And so at my church they always do the Passion and usually they have students do it, but this year they just had the clergy, who were standing very far apart from each other, do it, and then they concluded with this and I was like, “That’s right. I remember all of the other Palm Sundays in history and leaving and being like ‘that was so depressing.’” And I was like, “And I signed up for this actively.”
FK: You do the Passion on Palm Sunday, wow.
ELM: Yeah, is that weird?
FK: Yeah, usually—Palm Sunday is like, on Palm Sunday we do like the procession of the palms and stuff. You don’t do the Passion till Good Friday.
ELM: No, you do that in the beginning! You get it all in one. [FK laughs] They have a Good Friday service too, but I don’t attend it, cause it was Friday, so I was working. Anyway, Christianity! Hashtag [laughs] Episcopalianism!
FK: Hashtag Christianity! Sorry guys, I mean, we can’t help it, it’s, it’s Holy Week. There’s, you know. If we were Jewish we’d be talking about seders right now.
ELM: Excuse me, I also went to a zeder this week.
FK: Zeders.
ELM: And, uh, in fact I was—we were given a lot of leeway about what we could put on the zeder plate…that’s a Zoom seder, by the way, though we used a platform called Jitsu instead. Jitsi? Jitsi?
FK: Jitsi.
ELM: Jitsi, not Jitsu.
FK: It’s Jitsi.
ELM: Jitsi, that I, that was recommended to me that I really like, but I shouldn’t mention it—
FK: Oh, is Jitsi better now? Because a couple years ago it stunk.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, it’s as good as the other ones, so…
FK: Whoa. That’s great, because a couple years ago Nick was like really into using Jitsi—
ELM: Cause it’s open source?
FK: —cause Jitsi is like open source and everything else, and I was like, “I’m sorry, I cannot use this piece of crap.” [ELM laughs] “The open source community is gonna have to fuckin workshop this some more because it doesn’t work!” But it’s great to know that it’s good now because now I’ll tell him that, you know, I will use Jitsi again.
ELM: Yeah, it was really high quality! You can also set up your own instance if you have the, like, technological wherewithal, and so that’s interesting if you are that kind of person. So that’s good and better than Zoom, which is a nightmare, and yes! So we had a zeder, and I was, you know, we were given a lot of leeway. It was like, “any leafy green vegetable will do,” you know, that kind of thing. But I still managed to get a lot of the, I had a lot of the parts on hand already! And I felt pretty proud!
FK: You should, you should!
ELM: Because obviously it’s all about the things that you bring to it and not the actual act of doing it! [FK laughs] Anyway, religion over.
FK: Religion over. OK. Shall we, you know, transition into our questions?
ELM: Yeah! Do you wanna read the first one or should I?
FK: Uh, I can read it!
ELM: OK.
FK: All right, so this one is an anonymous submission from the website.
“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth, I really enjoy the podcast, and your thoughtful insights in the most recent ‘Ask Fansplaining Anything’ have led me to ask a question of my own.
“Throughout my time in fandom, I've always struggled to deal with the way ‘outsiders’ talk about fanfiction. I’m still stumped when friends of mine classify fanfiction as this dirty, shameful thing that teens use to confess their boyband fantasies, its only purpose being the literary equivalent of porn. When they come across works that people we know have written in their younger years, it becomes this grand form of entertainment for us all to laugh at and pick apart. As a fanfic author myself, this leaves me deeply uncomfortable, but I go along with their discussions, feeling ashamed of the explicit piece of slash that lies in my drafts.
“I was wondering how you guys would go about tackling these conversations. What’s the best way of explaining, or even justifying and defending, fanfiction to others? And will we ever see a cultural shift that leads to the normalisation of fanfiction? Thank you for entertaining my ramblings!” And that’s from anonymous.
ELM: OK, so, where do we start? Thank you, anon, for this.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: This is a, an important question and I think one a lot of people have.
FK: I think there’s a couple of pieces in this, right, because one of the pieces is the relationship you have to your friends, anonymous, and another thing is the cultural perception of fanfiction. Because it’s really, there’s sort of those two things.
ELM: Well, Flourish, we live in a society. Anon’s friends are just reflecting broader cultural attitudes.
FK: Sure! But I mean like, if my friends were reflecting broader cultural attitudes about something, and I said “Actually, I do that thing and it really hurts me when you say that,” I would hope that my friends, like—I would feel comfortable saying that to my friends—
ELM: Interesting.
FK: —and that I would trust that they would not do it, you know what I mean? Because like, to me, that’s like, an important thing about friendship! And if someone couldn’t, you know?
ELM: I think, I think this is where you and I are different, because I would not go the personal offense route. I would go the “You’re a bunch of clowns and I’m gonna give you, because I know you personally, I can give you the same speech I would give to the general public, and I’m just gonna prove how intellectually and emotionally tiny you are. Friends.” [laughs]
FK: Yeah, I mean, I think that both of those routes are possible routes, but I was assuming that this person wants to stay friends with their friends? Because if they didn’t, then why would they be like, rolling over already, you know what I mean? Why would they be like, when their friends are mocking fanfic, why would they be like staying quiet? Because obviously, it’s because they wanna stay friends with their friends and they don’t know how to bring that up, right? And so probably the answer is not—
ELM: No!
FK: —for their personal situation, just to start yelling about how fanfiction is great. I mean, you can and maybe you should, anonymous. I’m not saying, I think this is a good approach also.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Cause your friends are wrong. You don’t need to be told they’re wrong.
ELM: I think it depends on the kind of relationship you have with your friends and what kind of people you are, what kind of people they are. “What kind of people you are.” What kind of person you are… [both laugh]
FK: I’m people! I’m many people. I contain multitudes.
ELM: OK, OK. So the, so—in your route, the personal response would be to say “This offends me,” like, “This is something I do and enjoy and this is not—”whatever way you framed that, by saying, “the things that you did when you were 12 or 14, are not the same things that…” But they are, though, this is the thing, this is why I don’t really like to go down that road, you know? Because it’s like, you need to defend all of it.
FK: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think for me, like, the personal thing is a way to enter into it and say, “Look, this is—this is something that is deeply meaningful to me and it hurts me when we have this conversation,” because it does, and then you can go from there to say “OK, now that you know that this is, like, an emotional deal for me, something that is like—something that is difficult for me to talk with you about because you’re mocking this thing I love—let me explain to you why I love the thing and why you shouldn’t be so rude about it.” Because to me, that’s like, hopefully that will tell them, you know, basically like: “Don’t,” you know, “don’t just keep mocking this.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Because otherwise, I mean, like, if I tried to do your direction—which I think would work for you really well—I would burst into tears, you know what I mean? I would be like, making this argument for fanfic—
ELM: [laughs] Aww.
FK: —and they would like, start teasing me back, and I would just burst into tears, you know? Like, that wouldn’t, it wouldn’t work. [laughs]
ELM: Uh, all right. Cool. Well, so don’t do my route if it would make you cry.
FK: But also don’t do my route if you have the fortitude to do Elizabeth’s route.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Cause Elizabeth’s, you know, like, tough love.
ELM: OK, yeah. Let’s talk about my route for a little bit.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, cause your route is ultimately like—you gotta get there either way. Even if you take my route, you eventually have to get to like, the arguments for.
ELM: Yeah. So before this all went down—actually it was while it was happening, but it was when I still felt comfortable to take the train to New Jersey, so it was the very beginning of March—I went and I did a guest talk at a college class. This happens a lot when I talk to students, I don’t know if this happens to you as well, but there are definitely people who are asking questions like this and I just give them the entire spiel, right? [FK laughs] And I gave the entire spiel, and I could see exactly who was like, quietly nodding and then like really nodding and it was just like, “All right! Yeah. I’m gettin’ you, I’m gettin’ you!”
FK: Are you gonna give the spiel?
ELM: Well, yeah! The spiel is basically just, like, talking about my evolution and saying like, you know, and I’ll give it quickly, but I’ve given it a million times on this podcast, which is like: I used to think of fanfiction as something very private, and you know, when I was in college it was something I enjoyed privately, and I would admit to people that I was engaged with it, but it was not something that I would ever actively share with them, and someone else in my college class was very open about it, but then he was—I’ve told you this story. Your former FictionAlley colleague—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —shared his, like, really cringey and gross and creepy and like, you know, Lucius…
FK: Yeah, cause it was written, intended to be cringey and gross and creepy, but I don’t know why you’d show that to people outside of like, the context for which it was written, I guess. To gross them out.
ELM: It was meant to be, it was meant to be. It was meant to shock people, right, to say like, “This is what we do,” like, “we’re so weird and creepy.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “We write stories where a father kills his son and then, like, fucks his skull,” and you’re like, “What, no!” So then I’d be like “That’s not what it’s like, guys!” But actually, sure, that’s part of it too, right? You know, like, and—
FK: Yeah, right. He was, he was certainly engaged, and like, man, you know, that was a thing people did!
ELM: And that stuff is certainly written to evoke that reaction in other fans as well! It’s not—
FK: Oh, completely!
ELM: —to evoke that reaction in outsiders, right.
FK: That was, that was, that particular story—which I remember very well, unfortunately—[ELM laughs] was totally written in a context of people, like, trying to one-up each other, right?
ELM: Yeah, right, right.
FK: You know what I mean? It was just like, it was like a joke about how, how, how gross could you get, right.
ELM: Right. So that’s, but my immediate reaction was “It’s not at all like that!” Because obviously that’s gonna be your immediate reaction. So then when I became an adult and I started writing about books, that started to bleed into the fan stuff, especially because fans—fanfiction and fan stuff, at the beginning of the 2010s—was beginning to really mainstream in the cultural conversation. And so my initial fanfiction writings were like, “Yeah, you think it’s all porn and it’s all cringey stuff, but like actually, it’s like serious literature, and here’s like the serious literature that’s like fanfiction,” right?
And I’m saying that in a mocking tone now because I think that’s not a great take, and that’s the first step that I needed to go through before I finally came around, a few years later, after writing a lot about fanfiction, and saying “Some of it’s not serious.” But like, the whole point is you need to take the practice seriously, and all that it encompasses, whether that is people who barely speak the language, or people who are just starting writing, or people who are literally better writers than X, Y and Z famous writers that you can think of, right?
It’s all a part of it. You know, porn, not porn, everything—this practice is what matters, right? And it’s serious. And your Mary Sues were serious. They were you writing yourself into the story, you trying to boost yourself, whether you were a girl or a person of color or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It was you trying to write in that narrative, and it’s not cringey, and just because you made that version of you more powerful than yourself is something you should celebrate, but instead someone told you your OC sucked and you should be embarrassed of yourself, right?
So, that’s the spiel, right? All of the stuff, it’s culture. It’s creativity and it’s writing and like, anyone who says you need some sort of external validation, like, I think it’s awesome that AO3 won a Hugo, but the AO3 didn’t need a Hugo. Like, the AO3—I say this as someone who’s a finalist for a Hugo. I didn’t, I didn’t just mean to put that in there. [FK laughs] It’d be awesome if we win…
FK: Congratulations, by the way!
ELM: Thank you! It’d be awesome if we win, and it was awesome to be a finalist, but I don’t need a validation from that body to know that the things that we are writing about in “The Rec Center” are culturally important.
FK: Yeah. So something that you just said actually really struck a chord in me, because this is something that you taught me, and it’s something that is part of why I initially thought about the emotional part of this.
ELM: What did I teach you?
FK: Well, OK. So one of the things that you said to me was that—I don’t even remember the context. It probably was on the podcast—was that you were really uncomfortable when people were, like, sporking fanfics, or like, picking apart old fanfic or whatever—
ELM: Oh!
FK: —because one of the things within that is being, like, even with their own fanfic. Right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Because one of the things about that is being kind to your younger self, and being thoughtful and tender with your younger self, and not being cruel to the dreams and the hopes and the things that you loved, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And not mocking that! And I think that one of the reasons…
ELM: Shall I tell you the context for that? If I brought it up to you?
FK: Sure, yeah yeah yeah. Do it.
ELM: Was, I had been digging into my Yahoo!Mail account, which I got when I was I want to say seventh grade, and I was looking at—I don’t know why—but I was looking at my emails during my, like, Buffy fandom phase when I was 14, in 1998. And some of it was wild! I was like “Oh my God, I can’t believe I wrote these things,” right?
And I was talking with my mentor, Paul Ford, about—who I think is a very humanistic writer, when he thinks about, especially when he talks about technology and time and kindness—and he was the one who said that to me. I was like, “I think it’d be really funny, it’d be funny if I like, published these things.” And he was like, “Why don’t you, like, be kinder to your younger self and not do that,” you know.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And I was just like, “Yeah.” No one needs, that’s why that series Mortified actually kind of bothers me a lot. Because it’s making fun of the—and I know there’s some sort of collective catharsis in everyone being like “Oh, we were all cringey teens!” or whatever, but like, why is that—that’s such a cheap laugh! Why is that, you know, like—it’s like the cheapest laugh. Right? And it’s like someone who can’t defend themselves. And you’re kind of laughing at a young person now who might be going through the same, like very pure, like, unfiltered emotional journey that you were when you were 14.
FK: Yeah, and it’s also sort of laughing—it’s also sort of suggesting, to me, and this is the thing that I realized—I realized this over this past weekend in fact. Sorry, Nonny, this totally is, I mean your letter is really bringing this all up for me.
Because this past weekend I was going through my grandfather’s files, and like, he died, and I was going through his letters and things, and found all the letters I had written to him. And some of them I found not cringey but, you know, I was just like, I don’t know, I would never write this today. Like, I don’t know, I wish that I had written something different to him, I wish that I had… But at the time I wrote it I was 18, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And realizing that someday, in 20 years, I’ll look back at what I was writing now, at age 33, and do I want to—like, if you think that you’re going to feel like you were cringey back then, you’re gonna think you’re cringey now too, right? Like, the human condition is to be cringey. And we all grow in different ways, and I certainly hope I have a different perspective, you know, when I’m 53 than I do today, but you sorta gotta—you know? If...you gotta be kind to yourself.
ELM: Though, it’s not a pushback necessarily but one, like, one thing I will say in response to that is also there is this kind of…I mean I think you talking about you in adulthood now and you in adulthood in 20 years, there is a kind of sense that like, the passage of time does not necessarily make you, like, a better or more insightful writer. Like, there are things that you wrote when you were 18 that you’ll never be able to write now because there was an immediacy to the way that you felt as an 18-year-old, right?
FK: True, absolutely.
ELM: And there’s something, yeah, there’s something really—one of the interesting things about YA, and why I think it’s interesting that you hear so much, there’s so much of adults talking about YA to each other, right? And I know teens talk about YA. But like, their voices often get shut out of it, because it’s actually adults talking about the things they remember about being teens to each other. And that’s really really different than things that a teen would write, things a teen would discuss, while being a teen. And I think that there’s a lot of value in that too.
So like, yeah, your perspectives may change, but I don’t want you to say that like, the things that you’re writing now are necessarily—it’s not like your writing always, I mean obviously if you keep practicing writing it’s likely that your writing will always continue to technically have some, improve in some way, just by sheer practice? But there are things that you will not be able to recapture as time goes on.
FK: Sure, but there’s also stuff, there’s also stuff that I can’t recapture from when I was 16, you know what I mean?
ELM: That’s what I’m saying, right, absolutely.
FK: From when I was 14, yeah, too.
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: It’s always, yeah, agreed. OK.
ELM: That’s a little, we’re going a little far afield of the question. Let’s, let’s round it out by saying: will we ever see a cultural shift that leads to the normalization of fanfiction?
FK: I think it’s in progress.
ELM: I’m not sure what that means in practice, though. And I’m not sure that’s what we want. Because the normalization of fanfiction, to me, means a scaling of fanfiction, means a homogenization of fanfiction. I don’t mean this in a gatekeepy way, but I also mean that like, there still needs to be—I think that as the fanfiction world expands and as broader cultural attitudes towards it shift, there is some element of it that is continually being lost, and it is what it is, right? Like, that’s what happens when things kind of come out into the light, basically. You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, but I would say that I—I think that that kind of a shift is going on. I think that it is becoming more normal. I think it’s more normal now than it was 10 years ago.
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: More normalized.
ELM: More than five years ago.
FK: Not that that helps with your friends, Nonny, you know.
ELM: No, no. But it’s like, I think that—I mean, no one will try this with me these days, but if I meet a stranger at a party—back when I used to be able to go to parties [sigh]—and they try to say something obnoxious about fanfiction, I have the rhetorical tools to destroy them. But I also think that like, I’ve been writing articles that help give other people…not to say that, I’m not the only person doing this. But I have written article that I think people say they’ve used to go make that argument to people.
And so, yeah, I do think as time passes and more of those articles, as more people in fanfiction can get those arguments under their belt and feel comfortable in the, like, the intellectual foundation of it, and not have to purely say like, “Well, don’t, it hurts my feelings when you say this,” but also say “well here’s why you’re wrong.”
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ELM: “Here’s why this is interesting and important and here’s why the porn is good and here’s why the not-porn is good and here’s why the crack is good and here’s why the really serious and the schmoopy and like, why it’s all good and interesting, and here are the problems within it, and here are the critiques that people make to each other,” you know what I mean? Like, so it can encompass all of that, instead of just saying like “don’t touch it,” to say like “understand what it is, you don’t have to be a part of it but you can acknowledge that it’s interesting and it’s important and it’s valuable and millions of people are involved in it and just cause you don’t know about it doesn’t mean that it’s, or you’ve put that behind you, you think that’s something that only young people do, doesn’t mean you’re right.” So.
FK: Doesn’t mean you’re right.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: All right! I feel like that’s, um, that’s the answer.
ELM: I have a lot of feelings about this question, sorry. We started with a big one.
FK: OK. Let’s listen to the next one, which is a voicemail.
Voicemail: Hey, Flourish and Elizabeth! I was just listening to Episode 119, and the anon who felt like they were in a stagnant marriage really struck a chord with me. I had a ship that I shipped about eight years ago that I fell out of touch with. The show was on a paid network and my family stopped getting the channel and I had just finished my undergrad, and one of the characters went to prison! And I felt like I had met the perfect person but at the wrong time in my life. I learned a lot, but there was no way for us to stay together.
And after years I forgot how much fanart that I had made and how many opinions I had about the ship…and almost 10 years later the ship got married in canon in the show. And I’m so used to being the captain of a small ship. Like I have a ship that I’m the only person who’s written any fic for them on the AO3. I’ve never had a ship get married before. And it’s overwhelming! Finding the ship again is like a meet-cute in a movie, I feel like I’ve found the love of my life again and we fell back into place at the perfect point and I’m so happy! I guess sometimes you really do have to let something go and find it again. Anyway, I love our podcast and keep up the great work, thank you so much!
FK: That warms the cockles of my heart!
ELM: Don’t say cockles.
FK: Huh-huh. Huh. Huh. Cockles. Huh.
ELM: Stop it. It warms your heart. Wow.
FK: It does!
ELM: Yeah, warms my heart too.
FK: Thank you for sharing that, we needed a shot of happiness today.
ELM: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting too because it’s like, that, that was a very, a very personal…not solitary fandom experience, but it was very much about the voicemail-leaver’s personal relationship with an object of fandom, and it is interesting because the instigating letter that this was in response to was about the fandom. It wasn’t about the—I mean like, my feelings about Sherlock are like, 95% the fandom and 15% [FK laughs] what the, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Actually, maybe even more. Maybe it’s like 20, 80/20. And you know, if the fandom hadn’t been such a traumatizing nightmare, when the show starts to go downhill, you can turn to the fandom and be like “Can you believe we’re all still going to this terrible bar?!” You know, that kind of thing.
FK: Yeah yeah, absolutely.
ELM: I think it’s interesting this was about, this is so much about like a personal relationship with a show. But it also sounds like our voicemail leaver has, does a lot of kinds of fandom where it’s very personal. If you were the only person writing for your—like, a lot of fans cannot do, like, would never ever ever be the only person on AO3 writing for their ship, right? Like…
FK: Right.
ELM: I see people being like “There’s only 1,000 stories for my ship!” And other people are like “I am the only person writing for my ship.” [laughs] It’s like, “You two are quite different.” You know?
FK: Yeah, totally, totally.
ELM: So I think it’s interesting. It’s just, it’s nice to hear from different types of fans in this regard too who have different kind of—probably different ways of engaging with fandom.
FK: Completely. All right. Are you gonna read me the next letter?
ELM: I could do that! This was also a submission to our website.
“So I’m listening to your latest episode right now, where you’re talking about actors being shippers...” And for the record, that was a couple of episodes ago we wound up talking about this topic, earlier this year. “...and I was wondering if you think there’s a double standard with how male actors talk about ships versus how female actors talk about ships?
“For example, I’m currently in a fandom that’s heavily F/F, with the shippers of one juggernaut pairing being the most vocal and insisting that they’re being called ‘delusional’ for reading into the statements of the actresses that make up their ship. Yet they claim that there’s no criticism for the male actors on the show casually stating in Instagram posts or comments, or joking on Twitter, about their shipping M/M pairings. People in the fandom seem to think that it’s hypocritical for one particular actor to joke about those ships, since he infamously said that the juggernaut F/F pairing was ‘never going to happen…they’re only friends’ at SDCC a few years ago, even though the whole drama surrounding that was very overblown and most of the cast has supported the LGBT canon characters on the show, as well as headcanons of their characters being LGBT.
“My point is, what do you think about this double standard, if it exists, and are there other examples of this where there’s a discrepancy between how actors and actresses are treated by fandom based on what they claim to ship?”
FK: Well…
ELM: Yes.
FK: I feel like, uh, when an actor makes a joke about male/male shipping, it is as though God came down from on high and no one questions that? Which is weird? Versus…
ELM: Oh, are you talking about how, how like, Sebastian Stan invented gay rights?
FK: Exactly, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know, Sebastian Stan invented gay rights. And when people say that about women, trust me, I get excited when women talk about shipping things, but it’s usually because it’s like, “Hello, this is Gillian Anderson and I personally want her to be bisexual because that would mean that I would have a chance.”
ELM: Wow.
FK: You know. [laughs]
ELM: Does it?
FK: So, you know, it’s a bit different. No, it wouldn’t, but in my fantasies, in my fantasies. It would, the vast amount of not having a chance would be reduced by like a picogram.
ELM: OK.
FK: So that’s fine.
ELM: Go back. So this example is very interesting because it actually kind of complicates what I would have said if the example hadn’t been there. And here’s what I’m gonna say.
FK: OK.
ELM: So, for the last 10 years we’ve seen a steady—actually kinda flattened the curve on this one. But there was a really, an exponential rise from like 2013, in the, like, the middle of the decade, in male actors learning about shipping, learning about the gay ships that their, the male/male ships that their characters were a part of, learnin’ about who was takin’ it and who was receivin’ it, they love to talk about that. This is their favorite topic. [both laugh] Not to use such crass language, but that’s usually what they would say. And just kinda being exposed to it against their will on talk shows, in interviews, et cetera et cetera.
What I witnessed then was a massive double standard around the way that male actors were even being presented with this versus the way female actors were. Because, like, women being sexualized—female actors being sexualized is like, par for the course.
FK: Totally.
ELM: And there was something seen as, ah, like, extremely violating about the idea that predominantly women could be imagining these men in sexual positions, especially if it was—
FK: Right.
ELM: —with each other and not even a fantasy about them gettin’ with the female fan. Right? Like, at least, at least that would be like, embarrassing, like, you know, those screaming girls love those boybands, it’s so embarrassing. But it wasn’t the same as like, “How dare you envision that these…” People could be playing gay characters. It wasn’t even like you were saying the actors were gay! Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: I think that has shifted over the last few years, and you can give me your industry assessment, but I think that we’ve seen a real groundswell in the last five years of people in Hollywood actually understanding what shipping is, maybe not loving it, and being able to tell the difference between ships that people really think or want to become canon because they are letting Hollywood know, versus things that people can respond to in a joking way or make an Instagram post about and say, like, “LOL I ship it.” Right? You know?
There’s a difference between actors being able to say “Oh, I love X ship” on their social media versus showrunners or actors who are involved, knowing what juggernaut ship people are clamoring for, and saying it’s queerbaiting, and sending death threats if it doesn’t happen. Do you know what I mean?
FK: I think there’s a difference. I think that you are overestimating how much people actually know about this.
ELM: All right, hook me up, give me some industry insight.
FK: But what I was actually going to say was more that I think that the other piece of this is that in the past five years, “playing gay” has become less of a stigma. So if you remember, like, in the Liberace biopic thing, like, the fact that Brad Pitt was playing gay was a big deal, right?
ELM: I don’t think Brad Pitt was in that. I think that was Matt Damon.
FK: Was it Matt Damon? [ELM laughs] Well, whoever it was! It was someone in that category of like, you know, he was a macho…
ELM: It was Matt Damon and Michael Douglas.
FK: Great, it was Matt Damon. I knew it was Michael Douglas. No one was, no one was surprised about Michael Douglas. No one was like “oh no.” Because he’s an actor. I guess Matt Damon is an actor too.
ELM: [laughing] Matt Damon is the good one!
FK: He’s a good actor.
ELM: He’s no Ben Affleck. [laughing]
FK: Anyway, the point being though, you get what I’m trying to say, as muddled as this is, right? There was a point before that at which “playing gay” was a big problem for people’s career, potentially.
ELM: Sure.
FK: And they were very anxious about it. And that has been shifting over the past 10 years and it really accelerated recently.
ELM: Interesting.
FK: And so I think that—and again, that was always a problem for men, right? For women, also a problem, absolutely, but that started shifting earlier for women.
ELM: Yeah, like famously Laura Dern was ostensibly blacklisted after playing Ellen’s girlfriend. That was in the mid-’90s. But you know, we were just talking about The Hours in a recent episode: those were all A-list actresses—
FK: Right!
ELM: —and that was seen as, like, you know, a tour de force kind of thing, right?
FK: Exactly, in the 2000s, right? So in those 10 years it got changed. So I think that that is the other aspect of this, because people are much more chill about this if they’re, if they’re a male actor, because they’re not worried about what that—they’re not as worried about what that’s gonna have on their career if they get, you know, if someone thinks “oh no, they’re too gay-ish!” You know? So…so yeah.
ELM: OK. I don’t think that what you’re saying is contradicting what I was saying though, because I do think there’s a difference between—
FK: It’s not contradicting—
ELM: —like, it’s OK to like, jokingly, when you’re in a press—you know, we were talking about this with John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. You know, be flirty. Or I was talking about Cherik, my own ship: they can flirt together in the, they’ve been flirting in the, for the last 10 years in all interviews ever, right? And that’s not seen as a liability.
FK: Correct.
ELM: But those are also, I mean, all those examples are big massive franchises in which like, those are not gonna be, they’re not gonna actually make those ships happen, you know?
FK: Yeah, and yet the John Boyega and Oscar Isaac stuff resulted in—
ELM: Right, right.
FK: You know, a lot of, a lot of issues. So I think that, I think that people understand that there are issues, and they also understand that there are some things that you can joke about, and I don’t think that they—I mean it’s hard when you’re in it, even if you have full knowledge of all of this, it’s really hard to say “OK, like, when does it tip over?”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Right? “When have we been joking too much?” So I think that…and I don’t think that most people have that awareness.
ELM: We’re talking about TV here, I do think it’s different with TV. And I think with less famous people, you know.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: More potential, because on TV there is a lot more potential than in a massive—
FK: Correct.
ELM: —much—
FK: Much more.
ELM: So like, I think that’s tricky. I don’t know, it’s complicated.
FK: But I think that, but I think that actresses—they don’t get the same kind of like “Hooray!” from fandom broadly.
ELM: There are a few exceptions, and I think it depends on how many lesbians you have in your sphere, like…
FK: Well no but that’s what I was trying to say at first, right?
ELM: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
FK: Because like, like, I mean of course when Gillian Anderson does something like this there’s a big hurray, right?
ELM: Or like the famous, I just saw, that famous clip just came back on my feed yesterday with Tessa Thompson and—
FK: Right.
ELM: —Brie Larson talking about lesbians on stage. And the, like, crowd lost it, you know? That kind of thing.
FK: Exactly. But it’s a different vibe I would say, and it’s a different scale. It’s, you know? Like, the… so.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Different vibe. Different scale.
ELM: Vibes and scales.
FK: Is it time for the next question?
ELM: I think we should do one more and then take a break!
FK: All right, let’s do it. OK. This is from anonymous.
“Your reread episode made me think about the implications of the reboot trend of the past few years. I know there are more mundane economic reasons for them, but also the way familiarity and nostalgia may buoy us in fragile times seems relevant. This runs counter to the common wisdom of ‘hard times make for good art,’ though I guess both are true in different ways. Just a thought. Anyway, thanks for all you do, I’m thinking of you and New York City!”
ELM: Thanks for thinking of us! Truly.
FK: Yeah, that’s really nice.
ELM: No, I really appreciate it. So. I, uh, do you want me to steal your line when we read this initially? You were like, “It’s, it is the mundane economic reasons.” [laughs]
FK: Well yeah! I mean, not to say that like, the—so, the reception of them, if we’re looking at the reception of the reboots, right, then sure, familiarity and nostalgia buoying us in fragile times, that totally, you know, the way that these reboots are received, definitely that’s relevant. But there reason the reboots have been made is they all started in production, or not in production. In development, you know, 10 years ago.
ELM: Right.
FK: So. I don’t, you know, like, I mean…and it’s totally for mundane economic reasons. I don’t know what to say about that.
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean I think that one of the critiques that I have of a lot of reboot and remake culture is that it, the ploy—I mean, this isn’t necessarily happening in the production of the thing, but in how it’s marketed? But the attempt to tap into that often is quite hollow and shallow.
The, the biggest offender I saw was the new Ghostbusters movie that’s coming out? Which is like, essentially just a ghost movie set in, like, somewhere else? I mean it’s like maybe in the midwest? I can’t tell where it’s supposed to be. Some town, somewhere. And then there’s like, you know, the car in the trailer from the Ghostbusters. And I’m like, “This is the most shallow.” Just make it another movie! Why, why does this have to be connected to Ghostbusters?
Like, Ghostbusters is, like, those movies are fine. They’re not like great works of art. And the fact that this has been such a controversy over the last few years over them redoing something so sacred is embarrassing to me because they’re kind of shitty campy movies, right? Like…it’s not like they’re, they’re great incredible films or whatever that are untouchable. But they’re like, very very New York, and very ’80s, you know what I mean? They’re like, they’re very New York. They feel like they came out of a, they’re SNL actors, right? They feel like they came out of that, like, that aesthetic and that vibe.
And so it was just like, “How basic do you think we are that all we need to do is see the fucking Ghostbusters car and we’re like ‘my childhood!’” And then I tweeted about it and then a bunch of people were like “Oh, well, it worked for me,” and I felt like a dick, because I was… [laughing]
FK: The problem is it does, I mean, genuinely it does work for a lot of people, you know what I mean? Like…don’t know what to say.
ELM: That’s not me! I don’t know what to say either, you know?
FK: I know it’s not you. [laughs] I know it’s not you.
ELM: Because it’s also like, this is something that I think is really stomped over with this stuff, is about like, I mean, me talking about the aesthetics of the early, of the Ghostbusters films, the first—you know, the first two—matters to me, because it’s not like…
FK: Right.
ELM: I’m thinking of giving in and paying Disney, the Walt Disney Corporation, $7 a month.
FK: For Disney Plus.
ELM: To watch Gargoyles. I actually think I could probably watch Gargoyles in one month at this point. Like, just based on the way I feel right now. So maybe I could get it in the free trial and then hit cancel immediately.
FK: Get in, get out? Yeah.
ELM: And so multiple people that know about my love of Gargoyles have said to me like, “I hope for you that they make, that Jordan Peele gets to make that Gargoyles reboot.” And you know what, like, sure. I would totally watch that. But frankly, Gargoyles was made in the ’90s and me watching it is as much about the feel of it, it’s—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Any reboot is not going to feel like it’s coming from the ’90s, right?
FK: Totally. Totally.
ELM: It is what it is. And—
FK: Yeah, I men—
ELM: And I think of myself watching it in the ’90s and that’s what I wanna think of. I don’t wanna think of myself as an adult watching some new Gargoyles, like, no! No. It’s about being—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —being 11 and being like “This is the smartest thing I’ve ever seen!” Because it was weirdly smart for a cartoon, you know?
FK: Right, yeah. But the business, but the business reason for doing it is just like, I mean, it’s brand recognition, right?
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: I mean, obviously individual people want to remake things that they loved when they were kids, and I totally understand that impulse, because like, God, I wanna—you know, I wanna remake things I loved! Sure, why not, I wanna get into the guts of things and make some stuff, you know?
ELM: Do you? Do you? Truly.
FK: Uh, yeah, I mean—I think that it would be—maybe not remake. But like, not remake.
ELM: Things within the world, like, expansions within the world, sure.
FK: I wanna, I wanna make things in the world and like spin stuff of and like do that, you know what I mean? Of course I—I totally understand that. I totally understand why a director or somebody would be like “Yeah, sure, sign me up,” right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But from the business perspective it’s totally just like brand recognition. It’s, you know, everyone knows who Sonic the Hedgehog is. So you already have brand recognition, so you’re starting from a positive place, right? It’s not, it’s not complicated and it’s not thoughtful in terms of like, the aesthetics of the original or anything like that. It’s just sheerly a numbers thing.
ELM: Flourish, Sonic did not start from a positive place. What an example!
FK: Yes, well, but—well, I mean, you know, they did, it’s just that then they sort of had a problem. [ELM laughs] Anyway, we should take a break and then we should get back on some more questions and answers.
ELM: OK, let’s do it.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back and I think it’s time to take a quick detour into the land of how we make this podcast.
ELM: You say that, but then it never turns into how we actually make it. It’s just…
FK: No, it’s just give us money.
ELM: It’s just asking for money. All right.
FK: Which is fine, because that’s, you know, how it goes!
ELM: All right, I’m just saying maybe you could pick a different, a different phrase.
FK: No. I’m, I’m attached to this one. I’m nostalgic about it now.
ELM: Oh wow. [FK laughs] But the mundane economic reasons involved are that… [both laughing] Yeah, you like that call-back? So…
FK: I love it.
ELM: Thank you. Patreon.com/fansplaining, as you almost definitely know, we are funded by Patrons like you, or potentially you in the future. Future you. And there are a bunch of tiers, you can pledge as little as $1 a month, as much as all the dollars in your bank account, but don’t do that because it’s uncertain economic times, so. Save some of that money for yourself. Put it in bonds, right, Flourish? Is that your economic advice?
FK: Bonds.
ELM: Bonds.
FK: Yeah, sure, bonds.
ELM: Not stonks! Bonds. [laughs]
FK: Stonks are, stonks are, I’m worried about the stonks. [both laughing] Anyway.
ELM: Uh, so, our most popular levels are $3-a-month, where you get access to all our special episodes, or $5-a-month, where you get that and also when we’re allowed to go to the post office again to send non-essential goods, we will send you a super super cute enameled pin, a little fan enamel pin that you can wear out in the world when you’re allowed to go in the world again.
FK: Yeah! So, that is what we would like to ask you to do, if you are capable and have the money and so on. And if you—
ELM: And, and!
FK: Yeah?
ELM: If you do it right now, we have been on a little bit of a, a self-isolating roll with special episodes. We’ve done two in the last month, in our Tropefest series. The first was “Trapped Together.”
FK: Correct.
ELM: And the second was my favorite trope, “Canon-Divergent AU.”
FK: And we haven’t decided what the third one will be, but we will do one soon. So. You know. Get on that train.
ELM: I can tell you what it’s not gonna be.
FK: What?
ELM: Fated mates!
FK: No, it will not be fated mates.
ELM: I went on a, I went on a rant—cause this is a romance term that has…
FK: It could be “Soulbond AU” and then I could make you talk about fated mates in the context of soulbond AUs.
ELM: It’s just, the term “fated mates” is a romance thing that for some reason hasn’t crossed over into fic, and I would like everyone, everyone listening to make sure it doesn’t. I would like that. No offense, it can stay in the romance world, I do not wanna have to start saying “fated mates” because it just, as a phrase, doesn’t work for me.
FK: Great! [ELM laughs] It won’t be that! If you, if you can’t support us right now we totally get it. It is weird times, and even if it weren’t weird times, you still might not be able to. But you can support us in non-monetary ways.
ELM: Wait wait wait wait, if you do have a steady job, I said this last time but I am gonna say it again: if you have been thinking about pledging or putting it off, we got a comment from someone last week who said they’d been meaning to pledge for years and they finally got around to it. We—
FK: Appreciated!
ELM: We really appreciate it, and we are anticipating that the people who are in uncertain job times right now are gonna have to drop off, and so if you do have that steady salary or you know you have a steady source of income that’s gonna continue to come in, and you’ve been even vaguely thinking about it, we would love love love if you would make the plunge, potentially to make up for what surely is happening and will be happening in terms of other people having to drop off. So.
FK: Completely. And if you’re one of those people who have to drop off, you should not feel bad about it.
ELM: Absolutely not.
FK: And there’s lots of ways that, there’s also lots of ways you can support us without giving us money. For instance, by subscribing to us on iTunes! That helps us with our iTunes ranking. By telling other people about the podcast, by writing in and, you know, giving us questions for episodes like these. So you know, just don’t be a stranger, right?
ELM: Yes. And you can find us on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, all @fansplaining.
FK: Yep, indeed. All right. Should we get on to the next questions?
ELM: Yeah. We should.
FK: All right. So the first one of these is from an anonymous person, and they say…
ELM: On Tumblr. On Tumblr.com.
FK: On Tumblr. OK. They say: “So like spec scripts are totally just fanfic that people are too insecure to call ‘fanfic’ right? We’re all on the same page about this?”
ELM: [laughs] Anon. We are not on the same page!
FK: [laughs] Oh my God, that’s, if I were anon I would be scared right now!
ELM: I’m sayin’ this with a big smile. NO!
FK: No, neither of us think that spec scripts are totally just fanfic that people are too insecure to call fanfic! They are produced in a different situation!
ELM: Uh, so, this is interesting that we got this anon, I’m wondering if it is someone who actually listens to the podcast, because I feel like we’ve made our feelings on this pretty clear, but we could reiterate them now!
FK: Yeah! Fanfic is in large part defined by the cultural context in which it is created, and spec scripts are created for other reasons than fanfic is!
ELM: Right. So, a spec script—and it’s my understanding that spec scripts actually, while still done as like practice for screenwriting, are largely falling out or have fallen out of favor, is what I’ve heard from television writers—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —is that it’s pretty rare at this point that people are using them.
FK: It’s not as, yeah. It’s not as common. Occasionally, I mean, I think that people will sometimes be asked to go—if it’s something that’s super secretive they might be asked to write something that’s sort of spec-ish. But.
ELM: But that’s different than—
FK: It’s different than a classic spec script.
ELM: Which is maybe a TV show, and you write a version of a script to show that you can kind of match the style of the show.
FK: Yep.
ELM: And you submit it in a kind of a writing sample sort of way.
FK: Yeah. So it’d be like one of the things, you’d have a portfolio of writing, and some spec scripts would be things, and it would show—sometimes to the people who are actually making that particular show, but sometimes to people who make other shows—just to say like “look, I can match the tone of these different shows,” right?
ELM: Right, right. So while that’s still going on I think that’s good to clarify, because this was news to me when I learned that this was not really a way that people got jobs anymore. Maybe it is in some places, but just people that I was talking to. So I’ve always said, you’ve always said, you were the one who put this in my head in the first place 1,000 years ago when we started this podcast, that television writing and fanfiction are much more similar than novel writing and fanfiction.
FK: Totally.
ELM: And like, it is true. I mean it’s also true that I think fic, the goal is almost never—rarely, quite rarely—to match the tone of something.
FK: No no no, but matching the characterization and so on is really important, right.
ELM: Yeah, but I think it’s tricky because especially we talk a lot about, like, why there’s so much more fic for—other than like Harry Potter or whatever—for TV and film.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s also because, like, you writing a narrative, narrative prose about television characters, is inherently gonna be different than writing a script about them, right.
FK: Sure sure sure. Yeah.
ELM: But. The cultural context is so important. This is like, this is the hill that I will, um…I don’t wanna say “the hill I will die on” right now, it just feels like, it feels like not the right time to say that. It’s the hill I’m just gonna sit on.
FK: But you’ve said it so…yeah, the hill you’re gonna sit on.
ELM: Sit on stubbornly. [laughs] While alive. Is like, is no! No, these are completely different because the context is different and Dante wasn’t writing fanfiction, right? He wasn’t writing Bible fanfiction. Or, or what’s-his-name. Who wrote Paradise Lost? Milton. [laughs] I’m a terrible English scholar! You know? Like, they are, they were doing things that were like the things we might do in fic, but like, so are a million other things, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And the context matters. The context was different for Dante than it was for Milton! Right? But they were still working with the same source material.
FK: Not to say that this is not a good argument, because people say all the time, right, “fanfic is derivative and that’s why it’s bad.” And like, to respond to that, of course you can say things like, you know, “Yeah, so is the Aeneid and Joyce’s Ulysses and all of these things,” right, “they’re derivative in the same—they’re also derivative, so like, obviously fanfiction is not terrible for this reason.” But that doesn’t make them fanfiction, it just means that they’re related to fanfiction, they share this thing with fanfiction, which is that they’re, you know.
ELM: It’s true. That’s a fine argument. But I also think that like, any argument about fic that removes the current context about mostly corporate-owned cultural products and the anti-capitalist or non-monetized structures of fic, like, this, this ask kind of digs, like, kind of gets at that too, right? People are not writing spec scripts as a like, I don’t wanna, I’m not saying that the content of fanfiction is inherently subversive. But the act of fanfiction is inherently subversive, because it’s…
FK: Right. People are writing spec scripts to get a job.
ELM: Right!
FK: People are writing fanfiction because they want to write fanfiction.
ELM: Right. And they want to, you know, it’s the—and I actually think that when we talk about, we start critiquing the body of work of fanfiction, and we wound up saying “it’s not subversive at all,” that actually does, it kind of steamrolls over the actual element of it. You can say “people aren’t actually writing subversive works,” but the works themselves are. Right? Because you are, like, it’s this kind of like folksin…folksy… What’s the word I’m looking for?
FK: I don’t know. [ELM laughs] I can’t help you!
ELM: And I’m, I’m like gesturing, I’m doing this like “come to me slowly” gesture but it’s just like not coming to me? Don’t worry. You know what I mean.
FK: I know what you mean. All right.
ELM: So…
FK: So Anonymous…
ELM: Yeah, sorry.
FK: We don’t agree.
ELM: We’re not on the same page. Sorry, that’s it. I’m sorry. [laughs]
FK: OK. Will you read the next letter?
ELM: I sure will. This is from the website.
“Hello Flourish and Elizabeth. I’ve been listening to a few of your episodes and they’re wonderful.” Thanks!
FK: Aww!
ELM: “I found myself tangled up in the conspiratorial part of the Sherlock fandom in late 2016 and early 2017, when the Johnlock Conspiracy tipped over from hope into something really toxic. It’s weirdly comforting to hear the same sorts of stories coming out of different fandoms!” That’s the end.
FK: I’m so sorry that you were in, I mean, that you were tangled in that way. It, I was not and it sounds, I mean, Elizabeth’s told me that it’s bad.
ELM: I, I don’t, I don’t wanna get into this, but I will say that—as someone who found it very toxic in 2014—it’s interesting to think about. I mean, obviously there are different corners of it and in 2016, for context, in the beginning of 2017 was when the fourth season came out and people who had believed it was going to happen, many people came to the realization that it wasn’t going to happen.
FK: Elizabeth has been brought back to a dark place. [ELM laughs] But hopefully, you know, we’re glad that we’re helping you, dear anonymous person, work through your experiences at this point, and yeah.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah. I hope it is comforting to people when they hear about the fact that like, there’s no—while I might say some are better and some are worse, even though they’re all pretty bad, no fandom has the, has, you know, serial rights on the, you know. Exclusive rights.
FK: No one has a monopoly on being awful.
ELM: To, yes. And conspiracy theories, certainly, doxxing, certainly. I often, even though I rarely like to talk about it, if I’m on the podcast, because I don’t want to make this podcast a target to anyone who is still angry, often in—you know, like IRL conversations with people, I will bring up things that happened in Sherlock as a lens through which to describe toxic behavior in fandoms. But obviously that’s just the one that I experienced personally. But yeah, if it is a comfort for people to know that it’s not just, that fandom goes to these…and also to know, like, these things happened.
It’s interesting to see, I know you have personal feelings about this, that people send around these, the dramas from the early 2000s and they’re like “popcorn gif!” And I’m like “Oh, Flourish is gonna have a crisis at this post.” It’s interesting to see that—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —with time and distance and a lot of people who had minimal if any actual personal contact with the events, how they could turn into like, fun urban-legendy kind of stories.
FK: Yep, sure can. [ELM laughs] Suuuure can. Yep. Yep.
ELM: But. But.
FK: Sure can.
ELM: Yep, sure can.
FK: All right. Shall I read the next question?
ELM: Sure.
FK: All right, this is another one from an anon. We have lots of anon questions this time!
ELM: I think a lot came from our form on our website.
FK: Mm. “Great episode! I was especially interested in the discussion of escapism versus catharsis and whether those are contradictory things. For me, escapism is a cognitive thing (does it get me to stop thinking about what’s happening?), where catharsis is an emotional thing (does it help me process what I’m feeling?) So they can happen simultaneously if it’s similar anxieties or stakes in a different context. Just another way of looking at it!” And this is obviously referring to our episode that was about the poll that we did about the way people were reading and writing fanfic in the current crisis.
ELM: This is a great statement.
FK: Yeah I don’t know what to say! Good job! Amazing! Great formulation!
ELM: No it’s really good! I mean…
FK: Agree!
ELM: If it had been on Tumblr we might have just published it and said like “This is a really great way of putting it,” but it felt worth reading here. But I don’t have much to add to it. Like, absolutely.
FK: Thumbs up, Nonny.
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: All right, great, thumbs up.
ELM: It is interesting, are you, are you getting any catharsis in your fictional reading right now?
FK: No, because this past week was Holy Week and I got all the catharsis I needed out of that. Also I didn’t have any time to read anything.
ELM: [singing] “Were you there…”
FK: Thank you.
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t know. Maybe we, maybe with a little more time I’ll have more ways to reflect on this right now. But it’s interesting what I can even engage with right now and what I can’t. You know?
FK: Totally.
ELM: You know?
FK: Yep, I do know. All right. On to the next one.
ELM: Final one!
FK: You gonna read it?
ELM: I sure am! “Hi Flourish and Elizabeth, First, I want to thank you for all of the time you put into creating Fansplaining! I really enjoy this podcast and am currently binging my way through your back catalog, as I only started listening a few months ago. It’s been a particularly wonderful distraction from the current pandemic, and I’ve found myself using your podcast as a great source of escapism in addition to my usual dive into fanfiction.
“I was wondering if you could take some time to talk about the behind-the-scenes of Fansplaining. To me, it seems that creating a podcast is another form of fannish behavior—but one that you haven’t really talked about. What sort of work goes into the creation of each episode? How do you decide on different topics? You both seem very knowledgeable about a wide range of things—is this from experience, research for the podcast, or something else? I’d love to hear more!
“Hope you’re both safe and staying sane in this crazy time, Erica.”
FK: Aww, Erica, thank you!
ELM: Yeah, thanks Erica!
FK: All right, so how do we make the podcast, Elizabeth?
ELM: I don’t know, just turn on our microphones and we start talkin’ about stuff and…you send me the file and I edit it…ah, so the technical bits, Erica’s not even asking about the technical bits. I don’t know if I need to say this. But like, we, we always record over, we always talk to each other over Skype and guests as well, except with rare exceptions we always have video on because that means it’s much easier to, to have a conversation. Cause you can see the person’s face.
FK: Yeah, to not interrupt each other.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: In ways that are not, you know. I mean obviously we talk over each other all the time, but like, in constructive ways mostly.
ELM: Yeah, and actually, well, we both have worked remotely for a long time and so we’ve done a lot of video conferencing. It’s been interesting to see people’s struggles with video conferencing in the last month, because I guess we’ve been, we’ve been practicing for awhile [laughs] but um, you know?
FK: Yeah. And then we each record our own audio. This is something that people always ask about. We each record our own audio on our own computers using Audacity and our own microphones so that each person has an isolated track, and then Elizabeth knits them all together. So that way you can, like, mute somebody if someone has a coughing fit or whatever. Then it can be muted.
ELM: “Somebody” means Flourish, with a chronic cough.
FK: Yeah, well, you know. Or if your cat jumps on your face.
ELM: Wow, one of us has a quiet pet and one of us has a loud pet. [FK laughs] So there’s that also. You know, and the one reason you may find that guest audio varies is because guests have different equipment, capabilities, spaces, whereas our audio is ideally pretty consistent because we do this every time. And it is what it is. We always hope that even if some guest audio sounds less, less polished or a little harder to hear, we try to make it clear as we possibly can and hope that their content outweighs, you know. It is what it is. It’s, we do not have the budget to have people go to a studio—
FK: No.
ELM: —which costs a couple hundred dollars an hour or whatever. As, as some of the professional podcasts you might listen to do.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Now how we decide on different topics…one thing you probably have noted is we don’t have a producer, right. So often on a podcast you would have sort of the people on the podcast and then you’d have a producer who is sort of helping figure out topics and research—
ELM: You mean like on a fancy professional podcast.
FK: Yeah, right. And like, also sort of get all the ducks in order and book guests and things like that. We don’t have any of that. So we just do it. By talking to each other.
ELM: So as far as the guest episodes, there’s two different ways that we bring people on. One is to talk to the guest about themselves and their work, the other one is if we think the guest is knowledgeable about a topic that we want to have on.
So you’ll notice that we’ve had on a couple other journalists who aren’t me, like Aja Romano, for example, came on to talk about RPF. And we totally could have made it the Aja episode and been like “Aja, tell us your story,” which frankly would have been like nine episodes, but you know. [both laugh] It would have been a true epic. But Aja writes a lot about RPF, obviously is incredibly knowledgeable about all sorts of fan things, so we wanted to have them on to talk about that.
FK: And one of the things we generally don’t try to do, which is related to this, is we usually try to bring experts on, we don’t necessarily try and get…I mean obviously we do some research about things, but we don’t try and go like, “Oh yes, we’re going to research this topic we know nothing about and then we’re going to produce an episode that we, from scratch.” No. We would get somebody who knows about that, because other voices are good.
ELM: Right. So that’s the guest ones. For the ones that are just us, there’s a lot of different ways we do it. Obviously the, we’ve had seven of these AMA episodes, so that’s a pretty straightforward format. And the only reason we’re able to do that is because we have such a vibrant listenership and readership.
You know, I’ve done a lot of research for my various jobs on podcasts and how to build audiences, and people who have a lot more resources than us, who are working in media organizations and local news organizations, talk about the struggle they have to get anyone to ever write in to them, you know?
FK: We don’t have that problem.
ELM: And that’s not an issue for us, and the fact that we can generate so many ideas for episodes through what people write to us has been invaluable. And I think it’s something that lots of people who have a lot more money really wish, that’s not something you can buy, you know? Like…
FK: Yeah. Our listeners are the best!
ELM: Yeah! So truly, thank you for that.
FK: But you are!
ELM: But then, for the stuff that’s not listener-generated, sometimes you’ll notice it’s relatively topical, you know. Sometimes like I said the guest ones are too, why we had Earlgreytea on a couple weeks ago, to talk about the AO3 app thing. We thought, you know, sometimes something flares up and we think “Is this enough to do an episode on?” Sometimes it’s topical but in a kind of a slow-burn, or a churning kind of way. We did the Discourse Trilogy, it’s like, “These are some issues that continue, so maybe we should actually talk about them.”
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, yeah. And it’s important to note that often we will, you know, we’ve got like a bunch of different ideas for episodes, things we would like to talk about, but then like, sometimes our circumstances—like just our actual situation—means that we sometimes can’t cover a topic, like, in a timely manner. And we just lose the opportunity, because like we said, we don’t do this professionally, we each have our own lives going on, like, something happens—like right now obviously the pandemic, but in the past sometimes we’re both traveling, so we’re just not going to be able to do like an intense multi-guest episode on X topic, even though it would be really great. And then, OK, now it’s kind of too late. Right?
ELM: Right.
FK: So sometimes when you, when we don’t cover something on the podcast, I would say that if there’s like something big going on in fandom and we don’t cover it, it’s almost certainly because we had other commitments or weren’t able to cover it. You know, for that reason, not because we’re like avoiding it.
ELM: I will say that for clarification, because people have asked about this in the past, too, I think most people who are regular listeners or readers will know that we have this, like, party line where it’s not about the objects of fandom, it’s about fandom itself. And sometimes the way that manifests is by talking about examples in specific fandoms, whether it’s Star Wars or Sherlock or whatever. Because those are, especially if they’re flashpoints. But with few exceptions, we rarely rarely dig into actually what I would describe as like, specific fandom discourse. Right? Like…
FK: Yep.
ELM: So people have contacted me, and probably you as well, to try to get us to talk about really specific inter-fandom things, and it’s like, you know, we have this policy much more hard core in “The Rec Center,” my newsletter, partly because Gav—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw—has got a much harder stance on this than I do, but it’s like, she said recently, someone wanted us to publish a meta because they were unhappy about something that had happened on a show. And I was like, “I think this is well-written.” But neither of us watch this show. We’re not gonna sit here and fact-check what are opinions presented as, you know, that kind of thing?
And Gav said, I’m sure she won’t mind me quoting her here, she was like, “We’re not a fandom bulletin board,” you know? And it’s like, we totally could become that so easily with the newsletter, because it’s like, people could constantly be sending their takes. And especially I’ve had some fandoms that I’ve never seen the source material for, people have sent me contradictory takes on the discourse. And I’m like, “I don’t, I’m sure one of you’s right! I’m not willing to watch this show or dig into this because I cannot be, like, some sort of fandom police,” and I think you feel the same way in terms of what we can do here.
FK: Yeah. And we absolutely, and we have no—we have no interest in doing like, “Here are, here’s an episode about all these different fandoms,” because we also sometimes just don’t wanna watch the thing.
ELM: No.
FK: Like, everyone has tastes and we don’t need to watch everything. We can take an example from a fandom and talk about something that’s happening across lots of fandoms, but if we were to go down that route it would definitely have to be a situation where, OK, I guess that now my job is just to sit down and watch this giant thing.
ELM: Right.
FK: Which I have no interest in. And I don’t feel fannish about. And then you end up performing fake fandom, which is no fun, right? It’s OK, like, you can love, I don’t know, Final Fantasy VII, and I don’t love Final Fantasy VII. And that’s OK! You know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: We’re allowed! I don’t need to spend many hours doing that in order to talk about things that will be relevant to your fandom, so.
ELM: I think this is a huge misunderstanding about my job and probably yours too, and we should say this because I think this is relevant to one of the questions here: we seem very knowledgeable about a wide range of things, is this from experience, research for the podcast, or something else? It’s from our jobs. Right? Which…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You are researching individual fandoms usually, but you are an expert in fan behavior, so you can use those tools as a lens through which to explain to your clients.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right.
FK: And when I’m doing research, by the way, I do have to watch and read things that I don’t feel fannish about and learn about their fandoms. Like, I have to go watch that thing that I really don’t care about at all, but I need to look at it and try and put on my fan hat and it’s exhausting to do that, and you’re really trying to do a good job because you want to honor people for whom that is an emotional experience, you know what I mean?
ELM: Right.
FK: Yeah, so that is a way in which we get some of the range of our stuff. I don’t wanna do that for this podcast because frankly it’s really really hard and I do it for my day job already! [laughs] So!
ELM: And so then the thing I get as a journalist and an editor is, “Well, how could you possibly know about fandom if you haven’t watched,” like, someone said to me once that I hadn’t watched the Star Trek prequels and so how would I even know, and I was like “What on Earth, why would I need to—” I would argue that you don’t even need to have watched those to be a culture, like a pop culture writer either, right? And the idea that there’s…
FK: You mean the Star Wars prequels.
ELM: The Star Wars—what did I say? Did I say the Star Trek prequels?
FK: [laughing] You said Trek, you said Trek.
ELM: Sorry, you were like, and then you like—see, I never claimed to have some kind of nerd card, so there’s nothing to revoke here. Sorry, the Star Wars prequels, I had someone who I barely knew say this to me.
FK: I was just trying to figure out which of the Star Trek films you meant. [ELM: laughs] I was, I mean, you know.
ELM: Well, as you know, when I went on my first date in 6th grade, I saw Star Trek: First Contact.
FK: Yeahhh.
ELM: That’s right!
FK: “Magic Carpet Ride.”
ELM: So like, that’s a misunderstanding, I am not a culture critic though I have done book criticism, but that’s like specific. You give me the book, I will critique it. That’s really different than being a culture critic. I don’t need to see these things to talk about what’s happening in the fandom. I think that would be, we’re talking about behaviors, right? And so my background is, both as a journalist and an editor, it’s about culture and it’s also about technology. I work for tech companies, I study technology, I went to grad school to study the way that we use technology, to talk about and disseminate culture, and so all of those things go into it and I’m always as much talking about the way industries intersect with each other or the way technological platforms shape our conversations as I am about talking about the things that people are fans of. So.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That’s a big piece of it.
FK: Right. And in this way I think that creating a podcast can be a form of fannish behavior, and I certainly think that creating this podcast is a service to fandom, and something we do to do with fandom, but I don’t think of this as a fannish thing. I’m not a fan of fandom. People will use that formulation, and I think it’s cute, but that’s not the relationship I have to fandom. I love fandom, but I’m not a fan of fandom. You know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah…there are times, there are like exceptions. There’s that famous vid, the “We Didn’t Start the Fire” vid, where it shows all the fan…
FK: Oh sure, every once in a while I have some feelings.
ELM: Or, um, Lim, Lim’s vid, the “Us” vid, you know, where, with the, where it’s like…
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ELM: That made me feel really good things about fandom at large.
FK: Sure, but I feel really good things about a lot of different cultural things. You know what I mean?
ELM: All right.
FK: It’s not the same thing as being a fan of a, of a property, and that’s fine! It doesn’t have to be. So you know. Yeah. We can do fandom-y things, like, that are not…I mean they’re related to fannishness, but they’re not direct fannish behavior.
ELM: So all, almost all fannish podcasts, I would say, they’re about cultural products. And maybe they’re not specifically about the thing. There’s the one people are really into that I haven’t listened to, Be The Serpent, and they’re not about—it’s not like it’s a, you know this podcast, right?
FK: I don’t!
ELM: Oh, it’s a, at least one of the people is a very very popular multi-fandom fic writer. And they talk about fic and they talk about books and, you know, they talk about, they put fanworks in with other things and they just don’t draw those hard lines between them.
FK: Oh that sounds nice, yeah!
ELM: Which people have recommended to me, I’m sure it’s great, but I would consider—that seems like a fannish podcast. Or like Gav’s podcast with Morgan Davies is called Overinvested and they are like, coming from a fannish place. But it is about culture.
But I think most fannish podcasts are like, “We are fans of this thing, this is like a way for us to do meta,” essentially, in a more casual conversational way, you know. Which is, like you said, not what we’re doing. And even when we do our special episodes, which are, some of them are ostensibly about particularly cultural products, half the time it just winds up into us talking about fandom again, you know? About behaviors and preferences and things like that. So. It is what it is.
FK: It’s how we roll.
ELM: That’s us. So. So yeah, we don’t, sometimes we—if we have a very specific format, I can think of a handful of episodes where we did this. We did one about busting myths about toxic fandom, and we came up with like five. We wrote those down. Or when we do our year in review episodes, we write those down.
FK: We write those down.
ELM: But most of the time? We don’t write anything down. And maybe someone’s sitting there being like “I could tell.” But like, maybe you couldn’t tell!
FK: Yeah OK, that’s fine! I don’t care if they could tell. [laughs]
ELM: I think we both spend so much time talking professionally with people, almost entirely behind closed doors, about fandom—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —in ways that we can’t discuss any further on this podcast, that we are very very used to kind of framing things. And it’s, it’s one thing I’ll even feel like having you there…I’ve now done a few like, biz calls with you. And it’s very interesting how because we’ve talked together for so long, how I find it relatively easy. Like, easier than talking to other people. Right? Because like we don’t need to set up frames of reference to each other, do you know what I mean? Do you feel this way too?
FK: Yeah, totally. I do, I do. I feel that way too.
ELM: Cool, that’s great.
FK: We also both have a nice biz shift. It works great. [ELM laughs] We both shift into biz mode. But it’s still coherent.
ELM: I love shifting into biz mode! Gotta get you, I gotta get you on some more of my actual biz calls, right now. Because they’re like even different than, yours are like “In this town, this is,” like, and you say like, you swear a lot more and it’s like, and there’s like more sports metaphors…you know, things about like goalposts or whatever…
FK: There are unfortunately more sports metaphors.
ELM: Yeah, it just, it gets a little bit…
FK: You gotta learn the sports metaphors.
ELM: It’s bro-y, but not in a tech way. It’s like bro-y in like, an L.A. way. You know?
FK: Yeah, totally. I do.
ELM: I love it, I love it. It’s a great shift.
FK: Well, I think that’s the best we can do for answering Erica’s question. Thank you, it was a good question, Erica. And I think that brings us more or less to the end of our podcast!
ELM: All right.
FK: For today.
ELM: Keep sending these in, because we’re potentially looking at a lockdown life existing for months on end, and…
FK: Right.
ELM: I think it’s really hard to say, for me right now, and I’m pretty sure you feel similarly, like, I keep—I keep thinking like, “Oh, maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and like, I’ll be able to like fully focus and read a fuckin’ book,” like a new book, you know, like a—I can’t even reread stuff right now.
FK: Oh really? Wow.
ELM: No, no. I ordered, I ordered like five books in the mail and like, I’m like “That’s so aspirational.” How the fuck am I gonna read these books, right?
FK: I’ve been, I’ve been rereading a lot but I also cannot read new books. That’s not possible right now.
ELM: So like, I keep saying like “Oh, well, maybe.” But I’m also like super busy, I’m like working full-time and like, doing side projects and stuff. So it’s like, it’s not like there’s even time to read books. And like, this isn’t like a brag to say like “I have a job!” Like, I’m grateful to have a job. So there is that.
ELM: That being said, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like in a month. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to regroup and say like “Now we’re just waiting.” If we start to go over some kind of plateau and then a decline and we just have to keep literally sheltering in place, like, maybe our brains will start to shift a little and it’s just waiting. And then we can keep on digging into topics.
But for now, it’s really hard for us to say what’s the right thing to do and talk about and what are we capable of even doing right now.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I’ve really appreciated people writing to us and saying they’re grateful to have an hour to hear about fandom stuff and not think about this, even though obviously we’re slippin’ in references to it all the time. So I guess that’s just to say that like, please keep sending us questions because, like, this is something that’s relatively low-stakes for us and easy to wrap our head around and I think it’s unlikely that we’re gonna be getting a lot of guests in to have really, really complicated conversations for the next few months at least. So. I don’t know if you, did you feel the same way? My little speech here.
FK: I definitely feel the same way, totally.
ELM: That’s it, you just agree? You don’t wanna like add to that or talk about how you feel or…
FK: I agree. I really don’t! You said it. You said it! Why do I need to add to perfection? All right.
ELM: [laughing] Oh my goodness. OK, all right. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. Get ready. This is what life in New York is like right now, two weeks after the hasty sign “actually we’re closing” on my laundromat, and there’s no other laundromat within walking distance. Reasonable walk. I can walk half an hour to a laundromat, but with my clothes? Like, all right.
FK: It’s a lot.
ELM: And then what do I do when I wait for them to be finished, like, I stand outside? I loiter? No. No. So. I purchased an in-home little washer. And you have told me you’ve had these before and they don’t work.
FK: The one that I had I found was as annoying as…it worked, I mean, it did the job, but like, filling it and all the stuff was as annoying as putting my stuff in the tub and like, swishing it around with a paddle.
ELM: I can’t possibly swish it as fast as this thing’s gonna swish it.
FK: True! Sure.
ELM: I’m gonna report back, I’m gonna take photos, and we’re gonna see.
FK: I’m looking forward!
ELM: Things are gonna get so clean. I’ll put them in the show notes.
FK: [laughs] Great. OK, I’m not going to do that. I’m probably going to go and do laundry in my tub. Cause that’s…
ELM: Cause yours also just closed! So that’s what it’s like in New York City. None of us have access to laundry now.
FK: Yep, that’s it.
ELM: Actually, some people do, but on average they’re also the ones who have yards, and they’re the ones who fucked off to their second homes! Funny how that worked!
FK: Great. All right. Elizabeth, I’ll talk to you later.
ELM: [laughing] OK bye Flourish!
[Outro music]
FK & ELM: Thank you everybody who has pledged to support our podcast, and especially Alaine Sepulveda, Amanda, Amy Yourd, Anne Jamison, Bluella, Boxish, Bradlea Raga-Barone, Carl with a C, Carrie Clarady, Chelsee Bergen, Christopher Dwyer, Citizen D, CJ Hoke, Claire Rousseau, cordsycords, Desiree Longoria, Diana Williams, Dr. Mary C. Crowell, Earlgreytea68, Elizabeth Moss, Elasmo, elledubs42, Fabrisse, Felar, Froggy, Georgie Carroll, Goodwin, Gwen O’Brien, Heidi Tandy, Heart of the sunrise, Helena, Ignifer, Jackie C., Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Jennifer Brady, Jennifer Doherty, Jennifer Lackey, Jennifer McKernan, Josh Stenger, Jules Chatelain, Julianna, JungleJelly, Karen Kanipe, Katherine Lynn, Kitty McGarry, Kristen P., Lizzy Johnstone, Lori Morimoto, Lucy in Bookland, Mareinna, Maria Temming, Mariah Mercer, MathClassWarfare, Matt Hills, Meghan McCusker, Menlo Steve, Meredith Rose, Michael Andersen, Molly Kernan, Nary Rising, Naomi Jacobs, Nia H, Nozlee, Paracelsus Caspari, Poppy Carpenter, Quietnight, Rachel Bernatowicz, Sam Markham, Sara, Sarah Goss, Secret Fandom Stories, Sekrit, Simini, StHoltzmann, Tara Stuart, Veritasera, Vita Orlando, and in honor of: A.D. Walter Skinner, fandom data analysis, One Direction, BTS, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, and Captain James McGraw Flint Hamilton.
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